MESH TYPE DISTRIBUTED PACKET SWITCHING SYSTEMS.

In the near future, the packet switching system will need a large switching capacity. But, large processors can not be obtained in cheap way. So, it seems better to use smaller processors in a distributed fashion to obtain a large switching capacity. If several small switching devices are interconnected, it will be possible to increase the traffic handling capacity. This paper describes the composition of mesh type distributed packet switching systems. Flexible architecture are proposed which are based on the building block structure. A node of these architectures is composed of several switching elements, and one or two intranode switches. Using these architectures, the addition of a new node to the system can be done without any modification of the fundamental units. The experimental system has been designed and built.